


xanax, breakdowns, beer for thought (she's taking off)

by blackorchids



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e03 The Death Song of Uther Pendragon, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Light Angst, POV Morgana (Merlin), Redeemed Morgana (Merlin), Uther Pendragon Dies (Merlin)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 18:43:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20680124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Her father is dead. Because she killed him.It's time to surrender.





	xanax, breakdowns, beer for thought (she's taking off)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [23emotions](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/23emotions) collection. 

> **Prompt:**  
Dead Reckoning  
(n.) to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.
> 
> **Notes**  
Title taken out of context and out of order from the song _Westbound Sign_ by Green Day, because I'm doing this thing where I'm trying to have at least one title with each letter of the alphabet and my only two letters left are X and Z

Morgana awakes with a gasp and finds the cursed necklace at the foot of her bed. She can tell only by looking that the curse has been removed from it, which feels like a startlingly petty addendum from Merlin. She knows Morgause is south, by the sea, rousing the mercenaries and furthering the search for the dragons.

The knowledge that no one will be in to rouse her for hours means Morgana can lay there, panting and staring at the cracks in the stone ceiling. With the endless war they have been waging on Camelot, it has been impossible to go more than a few moments without thinking of the place that had been her home for so long.

But she has been burning with anger and indignation for years and, as abruptly as her cursed necklace had killed Uther, her fury has been snuffed out.

Her father is dead. Because she killed him.

How perfectly she can picture the sad downturn of Arthur’s mouth every time the king refused to praise him in childhood. How even that small expression of humanity had soon been trained out of him. She imagines him now as she had seen him last, grown, thin gold circlet atop his head needlessly, the same downturn twisting his lips.

He will be crowned soon enough, as if he hasn’t had the people of Camelot following him for much longer than anyone had even realized. Too long ago, he’d helped a small village of peasants and serfs overthrow the bullying tax collectors, and they weren’t even people of Camelot.

He will be a good king, and Morgause would have her kill him also. She pictures taking the life from him, watching his eyes dull and his jaw slacken and his chest stop rising.

It will be the last thing she sees, because she is certain that however she does it, Merlin will kill her immediately after. The thought settles in her chest with unnerving finality.

She looks around her quarters, dim in the face of the storm brewing, stone floor cold, silence making her ears ring. When she sits up, the furs covering her slip down to pool at her lap, and she stretches her spine, her shoulders coming in and her body releasing an involuntary shudder. Her chest heaves with one single, hitching sob, and then she shakes her head, composing herself. There is a lot for her to do.

It takes days for her to dismantle the armies left with her, to unspell the cursed stone-monsters and collapse the undead soldiers. She sends a message for Morgause with a pageboy and shucks her warlock robes and leaves her gowns behind, dressing in peasant garb.

When she leaves, she burns the castle down and doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this half-baked idea for _years_, basically since I claimed this prompt tbh (I think it's from 2015, whoops), and I'm not rly sure what to do with it anymore, so this morning I threw together a handful of paragraphs and a few finishing touches and have decided to post. This fic doesn't deserve my tumblr linked to it.


End file.
